"After war, the people you meet differ so from former times," wrote the Vietnamese poet Nguyen Trai in the early 15th century. Americans are still searching for answers to the Vietnam conflict, and the conflict that lives on in the collective mind and soul of this country. American writer Lady Borton is one of the few who has explored the North Vietnamese point of view in trying to reach an understanding of what happened and why. Borton was the first American journalist given permission by Vietnamese officials to speak with ordinary villagers and to live with a village family. During her time there, she met Vietnamese peasant women who played crucial and heretofore unrecognized roles in the Vietnamese victory; women who, like American veterans, "did what they had to do."